


Rough-handed Love

by Akingrecitinghamlet



Category: Frontier (TV 2016)
Genre: Drinking, Flirting, M/M, probably sexytimes later, rough boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-25 22:15:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16206755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akingrecitinghamlet/pseuds/Akingrecitinghamlet
Summary: In which Malcolm Brown and McTaggart make too much eye-contact.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Next chapter up soon! Likely to be a hot and heavy one...  
> Thanks @littledozerbaby for encouraging me to write a pairing I'm just honestly happy exists.  
> As always, if you've got headcanons or prompts for me just drop me a line!  
> Thanks for reading!

  The Brown brothers have always been close. Malcolm could remember back when Douglas still crawled on the floor and whispered in his ear which cousins he didn't like and which sweets were his favorites to steal. Douglas was the first person Malcolm had come to, battered about the head and unable to keep a grin off his face, after the first fight he'd ever had. He'd made the poor, pale bespectacled boy promise 'not ta go and tell on me now” and had him run around with a wet rag and some clean clothes trying to make him look even slightly less unpresentable. When Cedric had gone around a few times with his first girl, Malcolm and Douglas had been the ones to hear about it in excruciating, vulgar detail. After a while they'd banded together just to get him to shut up.  
  But after a point the secrets flowed less easily. Douglas had fancied the odd fair lady before and it had been obvious enough- plastered all over his face, really. But they never talked about it. At least they never did anything but tease. Douglas had scolded him a couple of times for not being more easy-going with the ladies they met or to quit grumbling at dances whenever someone took to forcing him to find a partner instead of letting him sulk against a far wall- but Malcolm had given him such a look that Douglas had let up eventually. It was better to be a bit of a brute if people let you alone.  
  They didn't talk about the fact that Douglas always spoke of getting the Low River Company to flourish for the sake of eventually providing for a family, and how Malcolm’s concerns only ever seemed to be his brothers and getting rich himself.  
  What they did talk about was business. And that's what Harp and his crew were supposed to be.  
 

  McTaggart smelled the way a man who has not been fully clean in months smells after he finally bathes. There's still a bit of smoke left in his beard and a bit of black earth still under his nails and the remnants of that hard-work aching-back life that cling to him despite all his best efforts and fancy clothes is enough to make Malcolm's breathing come a bit faster. _I’ll bet he knows how to smelt metal and carve door frames and dig a root cellar,_ he thinks to himself. _He's got his feet planted firmly in the mud of this damnable earth, like me._ There's something even-keel in the direct stare in his eyes and the weathered roughness of his hands that, if he's honest, makes Malcolm think about the sort of things he doesn't tell Douglas. Not that there's ever been much to tell- he just knows what he likes.   
   _There's something so damn refreshing_ , he thinks, _about seeing a real salt-of-the-earth man in a handsome suit of clothes._ It's what he wishes he saw every time he was summoned to Grant’s mansion. Instead of everything that terrified him- the obscure rules and manners, the tongue-tying French, the blinding finery and talk of money and the easy way Pond made insinuating gestures towards other men- he would have preferred to see something he could grow into.   
  McTaggart looked like something he could grow into. Where he got off wearing a suit tailored that well Malcolm had no idea.

  
  Malcolm doesn't smile for most of the evening. McTaggart imagines he's not the sort that smiles often. He's got the pasty, glum stubbly glare of a man whose met with Misfortune too many times and is well sick of her by now. He looks tired, but not sleepless. He looks like he could handle his liquor.   
  He looks like the kind of man McTaggart liked to imagine stumbling into his tavern, wiping his muddy boots on the front stoop, and settling in at the bar for a pint. The kind with a dour expression and a dissatisfaction with life. When pressed with small talk he would reveal himself to be a fierce wit and, with a few more pints of ale in him or a glass or four of whiskey, full of bawdy tales and raucous laughter. Dirty stories would make for even dirtier implications.  
  They'd be loud together.   
  Malcolm Brown looks exactly like the kind of bastard that casts a couple looks in his direction that make McTaggart’s palms sweat for the rest of the night. The sort to make bartending difficult. He can picture him tucked into an empty booth, his head hanging low, mind on a drink.  
   _It’s business_ , McTaggart reminds himself. _Harp needs to cinch this deal with the lady so we can move the hell on._  
  But Malcolm Brown must really be a bastard, because he won’t stop locking eyes.  
  
  McTaggart has lighter eyes than he had thought.   
  When the man had first come in, his small steps nearly light-footed in the wake of that human bear of a man he’d followed in here, Malcolm had thought those eyes to be colder. He was frightened they’d be distant, detached, the way Pond or Grant or sometimes even Douglas looked at him, seeing all and deeming it unremarkable. But not McTaggart. The man watches him pace with an odd look on his face and a complaint on his lips.   _It’s not just candlelight,_ Malcolm reasons. _Can’t be._ There’s expression there. Damnable depth. He knows it.  
_I bet he’s suffered._ McTaggart’s hands look rough and experienced, though with what he can hardly guess. _He knows what the hard life is like. You don’t get eyes like that from minding your own business and tilling the green earth. I bet he was in the war, or something,_ Malcolm thinks. He does everything in his power not to think that thought again. Do not think of him in kilted uniform, kitted up and gruff-mannered and capable. Do not think about what those cold night must have been like, alone. How he knows the way the hunger digs into your bones around the campfire, burning low with smoke-scent stuck in your nose because any larger a flame will let give off your position. How it cuts you with other kinds of hunger too, to be alone on the frontier-  
  McTaggart spares another glance in his direction and it’s everything Malcolm can do to try and keep his cool. _Better say something soon, you big idiot,_ he thinks to himself. Before you make an even bigger fool of yourself staring til you’re blind.  
  
  As if he’d had any doubts that MacTaggart was his kind of man, they both make off with the whiskey before Elizabeth can realize it’s gone. Neither of them even pretend to look behind themselves at where Charlie or Douglas will go next. Malcolm’s got his eyes on McTaggart’s ass leading him down the hallway, out the door. It’s go him wondering what else is hiding up underneath that kilt.  
 “Not sure why you chose to tag along, Malcolm.” Charlie raises an eyebrow as the three follow Harp out into the wide, wild night.  
  McTaggart just takes a long, loud swig from the bottle in his left hand, like he can’t hear the world. Harp breaks the silence and his voice sounds just as deep and terrifying in the crisp night air as Malcolm had imagined it would.  
  “Charlie and I will run along to the inn.” Harp wipes his nose with the back of his hand, at once oddly thoughtful and frightening. “You boys find somewhere you can dispose of that liquor before the Carruthers’s come looking for it.” A kind of mischief glints in his dark bear eyes.  
  McTaggart laughs. It’s a broad-chested, large laugh, and it makes a little smile sprout on Malcolm’s lips in spite of himself. A bottle in each hand, McTaggart turns to Malcolm and grins.  
  “You got somewhere to go with this stuff?” He shakes his fists, and the liquor sloshes invitingly.  
  “I got somewhere to sleep that hangover off as well.” He grins right back.  
  “Oh, do you now?” McTaggart laughs. “Excellent.”


	2. Rough Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malcolm and McTaggart get a wee bit closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know if you guys have any ideas for a third chapter/more McTaggart fics! I've only written direct smut a handful of times so I hope it's enjoyable. Definitely good to get some practice in! Send your headcanons and prompts my way!  
> Huge thanks as always to @littledozerbaby for the encouragement that made me finish this in an evening. Cheers!

   “You really think all my fancy clothes look nice, do ya?” He’s standing there, in Malcolm’s small wooden bedroom, the gold in his waistcoat shining bright like sparking embers in the dim.   
   “You testing me or something?” The growl creeps back into Malcolm’s mouth. “‘Course I do.”   
    The booze has been flowing, amber-colored and burning the back of their throats. Two thirds of the way through their looted stash and it’s stinging their cheeks. Everything is bitter and coarse.    
   “Think I’ll probably like what’s under them better.” He chuckles, low. The booze is making him brave, stupid, not caring if he gets punched or kissed or-  
   “Aye, that's well enough,” McTaggart laughs along. It's hard to tell if it's just the liquor pinking up his cheeks. “And here I was, worried you might only like me for my money. I'd hate to disappoint.” He gives Malcolm a lurid, amber-tinted grin and a shove to the shoulder. It spreads warmth through the bones.  
   “Nah, I could tell you didn't have much on ya. Otherwise, you wouldn't have stolen the whiskey.” Malcolm announces with a triumphant swig of the nearly empty bottle he's currently in the business of polishing off.   
   “And miss the chance to short-change some high-horsed English family?” McTaggart snorts and nearly looks offended. “I'm not sure I'll ever be rich enough for that.”  
   It's the sort of phrase that makes Malcolm’s heart beat faster, and not just in the 'take yer trousers off’ kind of way. He doesn't want to think about love right now.   
   “Fuck 'em.” He growls, holding out his bottle for a toast.   
   “Fuck 'em!” McTaggart concurs rowdily. The bottles clink hard enough they're both visibly grateful they don't break.  
  
   It's a cramped little bedroom, and McTaggart decides he likes it immediately. There's sheets on the bed- laundered but yellowed old with use. Everything's a little tousled, like Malcolm's curls. A good, fine fur stretches over the bottom half.  _ There's something intimate in seeing the place a salt-and-bones type man lays his head in the evening, _ McTaggart thinks.  _ It's a kind of trust. _ The bed looks warm. Should smell like sweat. It's an exciting notion, but it needs more booze.  
   He's a bottle and a half into the evening, wondering why in God's name Malcolm Brown had to have a face like that, when the good-looking bastard gets up his courage.   
   “Bet ya bent over plenty of men during the war.”   
   There's no doubting now that it's not just the booze turning McTaggart's cheeks red. “Well now,” he grins and mumbles into the mouth of the bottle clenched tight in his suddenly damp fist.   
   “Not sure what’s making you say so, but best to not make any assumptions there. My bedroll's never been crawling with admirers, just fleas, and I've never been one to complain whichever way the wind was blowing.” He takes a hearty swallow just to feel the cleansing burn. “A fellow like you should know better than to tell a joke like that, you'll make me spill my drink. Don't want to waste it.”  
   Malcolm pouts darkly.  _ He's got a good face for brooding, _ McTaggart thinks. “I wasn't joking.”  
   A hearty elbow to the side. “You know not everybody can be blessed with your good looks and cheerful disposition.” And at this, they both laugh together.

   Three bottles in. Malcolm can't stop staring. It's stupid, he knows, and it's just egging McTaggart on.   
   “You keep looking at me like that and I'm going to have to do something about it.”   
   “Try me.” Malcolm grins. A playful punch lands in his ribs and he exhales out a pained chuckle.  
   But that's not all. McTaggart's got a glint in his eyes that Malcolm can only guess means trouble.   
   “Ya ever had a man do this?”  
   And it's too late. McTaggart is on his knees and it's too late for Malcolm Brown.  
   “No.” He grunts out. It's followed by a breathy moan as he shoves his knuckles between his teeth. Tastes like flesh and dust.  
   “What about this?”  
   A high pitched whine.   
   “You're a loud one, aren't ya?”  
   “I can be louder.”  
   “Aye, I'm counting on it for later.” And McTaggart bites his hairy thigh, and Malcolm Brown sees stars.  
  
   McTaggart doesn't so much spread his legs as he does wrestle Malcolm atop of him and guide him roughly right where he needs him. Malcolm is weak-kneed and incoherent, if only for a moment. He gets his footing and there's nothing soft about him. McTaggart digs uneven fingernails into the soft flesh of Malcolm's back and it's clear from the ceaseless noise they're both in heaven.   
   Spit-slicked and calloused, Malcolm's hands don't leave him unattended for long.   
   “You son-of-a-bitch,” McTaggart grins, and grabs a fistful of Malcolm's curls and pulls.   
  
   There's more than whiskey taste in Malcolm's mouth the morning after. Salt and sweat and something definitely McTaggart. There's only one half-empty bottle still left, and for once he doesn't want to ruin things with an early-morning swig. Warm and hairy chest is pressed to warm and hairy chest and it's awakening something hopeful and domestic in him, but it's only a moment before McTaggart is scrambling to get up, get dressed, get out.  
   “Fucking Harp.” He mumbles, moving sharply, tumbling into his boots. “Always on the move, the damn bastard-”  
   “You'll be back in Montreal for another deal.” Malcolm can't take his eyes off him dressing. He wishes his movements were slower.   
   “Aye,” McTaggart looks up and it's a genuine smile, the sort of thing that makes Malcolm's chest swell. “And if he's not, at least I will be. You can bet your ass on it.”  
   “I think I will.”  
   It's that last chuckle he clings to as the door swings shut. Son-of-a-bitch wasn't supposed to take Malcolm's heart with him.  
  



End file.
